Blog Title — Do You Write It First?

After years writing articles, I come with a simple but quite powerful tip. Write your article or blog title first. That makes a big difference if you think about it for a moment.

A title is much like the headline in an advertisement. If you fail to grab the reader’s attention on spot, you are going to lose them, no matter how great your content is. It takes some time to write a compelling title.

However, you don’t want to spend too much time on the title at first. While the idea is still fresh on your mind, you should begin creating the skeleton of the blog post and express your thoughts.

Think of it as the first draft of the title.

“So, why should it be there upfront?” I hear you ask.

Great question, now I can show you the list.

It reminds you about the topic. Well, depends on the length of your blog post, you may lose track of the topic you are writing. At least it happens to me a few times. It is easy to elaborate the content and end up digressing too far away. The title is there to help me focus. When you have a target to aim for, you will be more focused on your writing.

It is a promise to deliver. The title promises the prospective readers about what’s coming. It is hard to know when you should stop writing if you don’t know if you already fulfill the promise. In other words, it sets the direction so you know when you have arrived.

It helps in the outline. Your blog may have different subsections, separated with subheadings. Unless you know what is your aim with the blog post, you can’t create effective outline for it.

When at last I finish with the content, I usually come to the title and change it if necessary to make it more accurate and perhaps stronger.

Sometimes you may come up with a more compelling benefit to put in the title.

Here it is again in summary. Create the first draft of the title, make it quick, go with the content while it is fresh in your mind and edit the title as you see fit.

Many copywriters swear by the content first, and headline later, but article and blog post is quite different, mainly because of its compactness.

Return to Blog Content — How to Write Great Content and Where to Get Them.